


Salvation

by laetificat



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Harm to Children, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-22 23:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16607078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laetificat/pseuds/laetificat
Summary: That was just the way it was with Dutch. The price you paid for those flashing smiles and that smooth charm. Often you had to just be content to travel in his wake, pulled along by the sheer power of his convictions, because if you didn’t believe in him then what else was there to believe in?Pre-game. How John comes to join the gang, and Hosea musing on his place in it.





	Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> I had some requests from lovely fans of [Sketches](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16534910) for more Hosea/Dutch, so I'm here to deliver!
> 
> I also recently found out that this is (approximately) the canon reason for John joining the gang, which breaks my heart ngl

The day the Yankton sheriff hung John Marston was hot as an oven and twice as dry. 

The hooves of the horses kicked up plumes of dust as they turned off the trail and towards the tree which town tradition -- and common sense, it being the sturdiest tree in the area -- dictated was the dying place of criminals and ne’er-do-wells alike. John was slung onto his mule like a sack of grain, his head nodding above his roughly bound hands. The town was poor, made poorer by the recent drought, and they didn't have provisions to spare for a skinny 12 year old boy who was due to meet his maker within the week.

The sheriff mopped his brow with his handkerchief as he directed his deputy with a wave of his hand to get on with arranging the rope. He'd been hoping to get this over with before lunchtime but the warrant rider had been delayed coming from Kewanee, no doubt thanks to Judge Redding's tendency to obsesses over the tiny details of every single fuckin’ case that crossed his desk. 

There wasn't much of a crowd for the hanging, which didn't surprise the sheriff. The kid was a stray, after all, the kind of burr that clung to the railway lines and the stagecoaches, sneaking and thieving his way across the state. Kids like that didn’t draw big crowds. 

This one just had the sheriff, the deputy -- who was taking his sweet time with the rope -- the homesteader and his wife who the kid had stole from, come to see justice done, and a man standing a little way off, holding the reins of a skinny white horse. The sheriff assumed this last was a curious traveller on his way through the town, or maybe some kind of travelling preacher trying to save the kid’s soul. He didn’t care much either way so long as the stranger kept his distance. 

Finally the deputy got the rope slung up over the branch and tied off to a root at the bottom. He tugged down the noose, then fetched the boy’s mule forward until the kid was underneath. The sheriff swatted at a fly buzzing around his face. The homesteader woman murmured something to her husband, who nodded, his face set and grim. They’d lost two sons to sickness that past winter and had taken some persuading to allow the boy to see consequences at all.

The kid blinked his eyes slowly, barely conscious, as the deputy slipped the noose around his neck and tightened it a little -- they’d had to make a special one, as the kid was so damn small. 

The sheriff mopped his brow again, then kneed his horse forward. His deputy walked a little distance away, ready with the whip which would send the mule starting forward and leave the boy to choke out his last and alleviate the world of his presence. The homesteader woman made a noise and covered her eyes, burying her face against her husband’s shoulder.

“John Marston,” the sheriff intoned in what he hoped was a strong and forceful voice, weighty with the word of Law, “you have been found guilty of burglary and intent to cause harm to these here good people. You are hereby sentenced to be hung from the neck until you are dead. Do you have any last words?” 

The kid closed his eyes as if sensing what was to come, his head hanging forward so his long dark hair covered his face. The rope tightened a little against his leaning weight. The sheriff briefly wondered if he’d faint right off the mule and save them the trouble. He wouldn’t be the first to do it. 

“Well then, may God have mercy on your so --”

The crack of the pistol echoed across the homestead. The sheriff had time to see the rope that had been holding the kid up explode into two pieces and send him slumping forward onto the mule’s neck, which spooked and leapt forward. He had time to see his deputy turn and in the same instant be flung backwards as if swatted by an invisible hand, blood flying out in a spray from his forehead. Had time to witness two other men, who he hadn’t noticed before, riding in from either side. 

Had time to see the man with the white horse calmly reload his pistol, then raise it, pointing directly at him. 

Another crack, a scream, and the sheriff saw no more in this world.

*

Hosea wasn’t sure what it was that made Dutch want to collect orphan children like some men collected coins. Perhaps it was a sense of obligation, of responsibility, or an atonement for past misdeeds that made him want to take on the lives of these lost young souls before they could be further harmed. Perhaps it was merely curiosity, to see how many of them he could convert to his cause. Or perhaps it was merely good business sense, a way of building their reputation and the strength of their endeavor with little upfront cost and minimal upkeep. 

Either way, Hosea wasn’t about to correct him on it. He had spent many years learning not to try to correct Dutch on any point, at least not in an obvious way. Far easier to drive him like a wild mustang, letting him arrive at whatever conclusion he chose in his own time and under his own power. It took a deft hand, but Hosea considered himself up to the task. 

That was just the way it was with Dutch. The price you paid for those flashing smiles and that smooth charm. Often you had to just be content to travel in his wake, pulled along by the sheer power of his convictions, because if you didn’t believe in him then what else was there to believe in?

If you didn’t, then why else did you spend your time killing and robbing, if not to do good?

The answers to those questions drew the sorts of uncomfortable thoughts that weren’t easily drowned again, not even in whiskey, so Hosea stayed well away from them. 

Instead, he rode out with Dutch and Arthur on stifling hot days such as these, and saved scrawny boys such as the one that was clinging to his back as they made their way back to the camp, and assumed that Dutch had a good reason.

Miss Grimshaw met them at the edge of the camp, a shotgun ready in her capable hands. She gasped as she saw John and hurried over to them, already exclaiming over how skinny the boy was, and how had he gotten those bruises? And surely that wasn’t a noose about his neck?

Hosea helped the lad down, catching him under the arm as he staggered. Young Jenny appeared, and she and Miss Grimshaw soon had the boy whisked off into their tent to be ministered to. 

Dutch watched them go, and nodded to himself as the three of them walked their horses to the hitching posts. 

“Well done, gentlemen. A good day’s work,” he concluded. “Another young life reclaimed for freedom instead of being spent so uselessly in the dirt.” 

Arthur grunted as he tied his horse to the post and set to brushing some of the clinging dust and sweat from her shoulders.

“Another goddamn mouth to feed, you mean,” he groused. Dutch laughed -- it amused him to see Arthur jealous, so much so that Hosea privately thought it might be part of the reason why he insisted on bringing him along to every rescue. 

“I don’t recall you complaining when we fetched you out of that stinking river town,” Dutch pointed out, putting a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur shrugged him off, scowling. 

“And I was grateful then and I’m grateful now,” he growled, digging in his pocket for a cigarette. “All I’m sayin’ is don’t expect me to watch over that whelp. I got better things to do with my time than be a nursemaid for you, Dutch.”

With that he stalked away across the camp. Dutch didn’t try to follow, but turned to Hosea and shrugged. Sweat dampened his moustache and the front of his shirt; his arms were flecked with caked dust and dried blood. Hosea wondered if there would ever be a time when he didn’t find the man beautiful.

“The boy has a point, Dutch,” Hosea pointed out, partly because it was true and partly because it was his role. He lifted his hat to run his hand through his sweaty hair. “We’re stretched thin as it is. It will be weeks until the kid is strong enough to pull his weight. We should probably move the camp as well, there will be law wondering where that sheriff is and we left tracks a mile wide in that goddamn dust.”

Dutch frowned, a spark of true anger in his eyes at being reminded of these small failings. Still, Hosea bore it, because he could. Because Dutch needed him to. 

“So we’ll move the camp,” Dutch replied, walking a little way to the horses’ water barrel and dunking his hands in. “Arthur and Jenny can do a little more hunting.” He lifted one hand out of the water and pointed, dripping, at Hosea. “This was a good thing we did today, Hosea! A good! Goddamn! Thing! They were going to hang that boy, and for what? For what, Hosea? Stealing a crust of bread, a sip of water? Trying to make a goddamn life for himself in this goddamn country, like everyone else? He could have died today. A little kid!” He braced his hands on the barrel’s rim and stood there, head hanging, looking into the water but not seeing it. “Goddamn it.”

It was Hosea’s turn to walk over and put a hand on Dutch’s shoulder. 

“I’m not saying we did a bad thing, Dutch. Hell, look at how Arthur turned out. That boy can outgun either of us. We’re building something here, something important, but we’ve just got to be careful.”

Dutch lifted his hand and settled it, damp and cool, over Hosea’s fingers. He turned towards Hosea.

“I don’t know what I would do without you, Hosea.” 

Hosea drew in a breath, remembering that first night by the fire on the trail outside of Chicago, the way Dutch had laughed when he woke with a knife to his throat. The brief, intense struggle which Dutch had won easily, being wiry as a fox and twice as smart. The way Dutch had held Hosea there, pinned to the ground with his own knife waiting at his ribs, then suddenly stepped up and away and asked him if he was carrying any decent liquor in those saddlebags. 

The way Hosea had lain there, utterly mystified, as Dutch outlined his philosophy on life and a man’s right to freedom, and how sometimes that meant turning a mistake into an opportunity.

It had been Hosea’s first taste of the heady, glorious, dangerous drug that was Dutch van der Linde. 

Hosea reached out and lightly touched his fingertips to Dutch’s cheek, signalling and asking for permission. Dutch accepted, surging forward to press his mouth against Hosea’s. He tasted like sweat and tobacco, his body lean and hot under Hosea’s seeking palms, his breathing rapid as he kissed Hosea again and again, as if each one would be their last. 

Finally Dutch broke the contact, not quite roughly but not as gently as he might have done with anyone else. He reached up and put both his hands on either side of Hosea’s head, pressing his forehead against Hosea’s so their panting breaths mingled. 

“You’re the best goddamn soul I ever saved,” Dutch sighed. Hosea traced a trembling fingertip over Dutch’s temple and down to his jaw, the only response he could muster.

A shout from across the camp broke them apart.

“Dutch! The kid’s awake and askin’ who found him!”

Dutch flashed Hosea a grin, tugging his shirt straight. Hosea let out his pent up breath, and waved Dutch forward. 

“Let’s go then,” he said, “might as well see what the lad has to say for himself.”

Dutch didn’t glance back at him as he strode away across the camp, trusting that he would follow on behind. And Hosea did.

It was his place, after all.


End file.
